


Aftermath

by alloutforthewar



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-07
Updated: 2016-06-07
Packaged: 2018-07-13 00:13:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 969
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7130396
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alloutforthewar/pseuds/alloutforthewar





	1. Aftermath

The car rolls to a stop and her mother kills the engine, which only serves to amplify the voices inside her head.

“Ready?” Maggie murmurs.

Scully looks out the window over all the tiny, snow-covered headstones and suddenly can’t breathe, her vision greying at the edges. She drops her head between her knees and tries to gulp in air, vaguely aware of her mother’s hands on her back.

“Dana,” she tries to soothe. “Dana honey…”

There are tears dripping off the end of her nose and her hands are shaking. As if it wasn’t bad enough to see his beautiful body cold and lifeless, to have to pick out the clothes he will wear _the only clothes he will ever wear again_ but now she is supposed to put that body into the ground and cover it with dirt?

Gasping, she fumbles with the latch of the car door, suddenly terrified she is going to be sick. The cold winter air hits her like a slap in the face, and it helps, ironically, stinging her eyes and burning her lungs. It is fitting that the world is frozen.

She hopes the ice never thaws.

Her mother has walked around the car and is crouching before her.

“It’s okay,” she’s saying, and Scully has a horrible, overwhelming urge to hit her.

 _Okay?_ Nothing will ever be okay again, and the tiny miracle life she has within her can’t erase that, can’t erase any of this. She is happy, she is so happy that her prayers have been answered, but there is a small voice within her that screams that this price is too high and she has changed her mind.

There is a small, evil voice within her that says she isn’t sure that she wouldn’t trade them back.

“I can’t do this,” is all she says.

He can’t go in the ground, _he can’t he can’t he can’t_. Is it absurd for her to want to keep him in her apartment just in case? It is, she knows it is, but she can’t bury him in this frozen earth.

“He’ll be cold,” she whispers, and her mother gives her a small, sad smile.

“He won’t be cold, Dana,” she says, her voice smooth as honey. “He’s just fine where he is. It’s you we have to worry about now.”

But he wasn’t just fine, he wasn’t fine at all, the scars are proof that nothing was fine and he needed her and they hurt him and she didn’t find him in time. She was too late, she failed, she failed him as he had never failed her and the consequences are too catastrophic for her to think about and she doesn’t deserve to ever be fine again.

She has his child inside her and she has to put him in the ground and this is what she deserves.

She presses her fists against her eyes and shakes her head.

“This is not happening,” she whispers. “This is not happening.”

Her mother looks more afraid than she’s ever seen her, and she wants to say, _yes i am falling apart. Yes, he held me together._


	2. aWake

The blood is pounding in her ears, her breaths coming short and shallow as she strides down the corridor, heart in her throat. 

_He'salivehe'salivehe'salivehe'salive_

She’d been on the couch when the call came, curled in on herself and dozing fitfully, the television on silently in the background and his afghan wrapped tight around her like a swaddle. Funny how she’d adopted more of his habits since he left, _since he died_ , than she did when he was here. 

She’d been dreaming about his hands, his long tapered fingers, dreaming about them tapping on keyboards, drumming against the steering wheel, inching up her thighs. She’d been dreaming about his hands cradling their child.

“Scully,“ she’d answered, struggling towards consciousness, unwilling to leave the one place where she could touch and smell and taste him. 

She’d heard each word clearly yet she’d had to ask them to repeat themselves three times. 

The last forty minutes seem to have passed in the blink of an eye and she’s not sure she knows how she got here or where she’s parked the car. She remembers hanging up the phone and retching into the kitchen sink.

And now she’s here, marching down a hospital corridor at 4:37am, a spark of hope in her chest alongside a voice in her head reminding her that she buried him in the ground and he’s strong but he’s not that strong. 

But he is. He is, _there he is_ , in a bed, in a hospital bed in a gown like any other patient, and when she presses her ear to his chest there’s a heartbeat and her faith in everything is restored all at once. She believes in God and Bigfoot and little green men, she believes in fairies and goblins and telekinesis because here he is where he has no right to be.

She’s vaguely aware of Skinner and Doggett out in the corridor, hushed voices and bent heads, but she doesn’t care what they want or what they think because the only thing that’s ever mattered to her more than herself is lying underneath her palms with a heart beating inside of his chest, and if this is an out of body experience or she’s truly lost her mind then she doesn’t ever want her sanity back.

A tear drips off the end of her nose but instead of landing on the frozen ground of a cemetery it lands on his warm body and she lets out a sob of relief as the child in her womb stamps his little feet.

 _I’ll be good_ , she promises. _I don’t know what I did to deserve this but I promise I’ll be good._


End file.
